Author and executive editor of The New Yorker, Dorothy Wickenden will discuss her book Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. The two “society girls” are 1909 Smith alums, Dorothy Woodruff (Wickenden’s grandmother) and Rosamond Underwood. Several years ago, Wickenden came across a collection of letters that Woodruff had written home to Auburn, New York, from the small community of Elkhead, Colorado, where the two Smith friends had gone to teach in 1916. The letters became fodder for an article in The New Yorker in 2009 and then became the backbone of Nothing Daunted. Sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries and the Smith College Archives

Monday, March 12, 2012, 4:30 p.m. | Neilson Library Browsing Room

Robert Darnton: Books, Libraries, and the Digital Future

Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard. Darnton was a pioneer in the study of the history of the book, and today writes and speaks about e-publishing. He is the driving force behind the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) project and was a founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. From 1968 to 1997, Darnton served on the European History faculty at Princeton. He has written extensively on the literary world of Enlightenment France. Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award and election to the French Legion of Honor. Sponsored by the President’s Office

Kathy Walkup directs the Graduate Book Art Program at Mills College in California. Her teaching and writing focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century women printers and the history and practice of typography. This is the annual McGrath Lecture in Book Arts, which honors the memory of local printing legend Harold P. McGrath. A reception will follow. Sponsored by the Mortimer Rare Book Room

Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 4:30 p.m. | Neilson Library Browsing Room

Michael Suarez: The Future for Books in the Digital Age

Michael Suarez, S.J., is Director of the Rare Book School, Professor of English, University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections, all at the University of Virginia. Suarez is known to be a most engaging speaker, “a world renowned scholar, a dynamic and demanding teacher and an inventive and passionately engaged citizen,” says a colleague at UVA. He is a leading scholar of the history of the book and eighteenth century literature. Sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries

An exhibition of decorative papers, the handiwork of some of the Valley’s premier book artists. Paste papers made by 19 book workers are featured in this exhibition and the fall 2011 publication: Paste Papers of the Pioneer Valley. With an essay by David Bourbeau (Kat Ran Press & Catawba Press).